Your Right to Know

Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoFred Squillante | DISPATCHMany of the people Tina Keller meets each week need to be recertified for the food-stamp program. She recertified Mike Postlethwaite, left, on Wednesday.

Most people make it through the application process without getting too upset or embarrassed.
But there are times, and Tina Keller couldn’t begin to count them all, when she realizes that the
person sitting next to her has started to cry.

“So I share my story,” Keller said.

She tells them she once needed this kind of help. Keller’s husband lost his job of 17 years, and
her part-time position as a social worker couldn’t feed a family of five. They had to sign up for
food stamps.

That was five years ago, and Keller is no longer a recipient in the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program. Her husband soon found another job and she did, too: as a food-stamp outreach
worker, helping to enroll eligible Ohioans in a program that has grown to include a record 1.9 m
illion people — 1 of every 6 state residents.

Nationwide, more than 47 million adults and children — about 1 in 7 Americans — are food-stamp
recipients.

Advocates say that outreach programs, many of them honed as statewide plans in the wake of the
Great Recession, help move the poorest families from food-pantry to grocery-store lines and pump
money into local communities.

Critics say the food-stamp program and its outreach efforts are out of control, thriving because
of a disconnect between state and federal budget priorities.

“Outreach is excessive, but it’s not the core issue,” said Robert Rector of the Heritage
Foundation, a conservative research group in Washington. “A big problem is that the states
administer these programs but don’t pay for them. You’ll even hear Republican governors say in
private, ‘This is free money.’ ”

Keller sets up her laptop each week at two Columbus food pantries. Above her desk is a poster
with pictures of fresh vegetables and a headline telling readers they can sign up for food stamps
on the spot.

Mike Postlethwaite, 60, takes a seat and asks for help getting recertified for the program,
which he’s been in before. “I try to get work, but when you ain’t 35 years old, it’s hard,” he
said.

Advocates know the $75 billion federal program has surged. They say policymakers should not
focus on cuts, but on why so many people have incomes low enough to qualify. “We’re not trying to
recruit anyone,” Keller said. “It’s available. I think it’s a valuable service.”

To obtain food stamps, a household’s gross (pre-tax) income cannot exceed 130 percent of the
federal poverty level. A single person with a monthly gross income of $1,245 or less is eligible;
for a family of four, the income limit is $2,551 a month. The average benefit is about $130 per
person or $270 per household each month.

Matt Habash, president and CEO of the Mid-Ohio Foodbank, said the growth of the food-stamp
program in recent years staved off disaster for the unemployed, seniors and the working poor. Ohio’s
enrollment has increased by about 75 percent since 2007.

“At the end of the day, I’d say, ‘Thank God it was there,’ ” Habash said.

Pat Bebo, head of the Community Nutrition Program in the Ohio State University Extension, said
the food-stamp program grows and declines in relation to the economy.

“Now, in this economy, we have an underemployment problem,” she said. “About 70 percent of the
people who get SNAP benefits have at least one person in the household with a job. The low-wage
jobs haven’t taken people off the program.”

Habash thinks criticism of food assistance is misplaced. “People want a silver-bullet solution
for problems that are complex and long-term,” he said. “When it goes on long enough, they tend to
blame the victim.”

Many of the people Keller meets each week, like Postlethwaite, had been in the program and need
to recertify or enroll again. Others are new and had no idea they were eligible.

“That happens a lot, especially when I work in Delaware County,” Keller said. “They don’t know
about this at all.”

The affluent county, however, has seen its food-stamp rolls increase 60 percent since June 2007,
to more than 7,000 recipients. Keller usually meets people by appointment at a Delaware library.
But last week she signed someone up at a McDonald’s.

“Transportation was an issue for him,” she said.

Keller is one of 22 food-stamp outreach workers employed through a partnership program of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, the Ohio
Association of Foodbanks and its partner agencies.

Although the outreach program was operating last week, Ohio’s grants for the next fiscal year
had not been approved by the time the federal government shut down. Local advocates were deciding
whether to continue services.

Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, the food-banks association executive director, said food-stamp outreach
formalized in Ohio after both Republican and Democratic legislators asked advocates what they were
doing to reduce the need for state money to assist overwhelmed food pantries.

“We hadn’t had, per se, a statewide plan,” Hamler-Fugitt said. “Our approach is one of raising
awareness and educating folks that they can still work and, if they are income-eligible, they can
participate and receive a modest benefit.”

She said outreach and Ohio Benefit Bank workers helped an estimated 32,000 Ohioans obtain SNAP
benefits last year. Many people enroll on their own or through other agencies, too.

Outreach also came under fire in Congressional debates last month, when the Republican-majority
House voted to chop nearly $4 billion a year from the food-stamp program. Savings would be achieved
through work requirements and time limits for the able-bodied.

“It doesn’t mean that you want to cut people off arbitrarily,” said the Heritage Foundation’s
Rector. “In general, everyone is going to be better off if you require some type of constructive
activity.”

Keller thinks that’s easier to ponder in theory. She signed up a woman who’s sleeping in a
neighbor’s backyard. “I brought her blankets,” Keller said. “I can’t imagine people going without
this help, too.”